


From the Wreckage

by leinthalexandra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Rule 63, fluff with a side order of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-15
Updated: 2012-03-15
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:33:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leinthalexandra/pseuds/leinthalexandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She held up a duffel bag. "Won't do for you to be making a break for it in that...gown thing. Dude, it doesn’t even have a <i>back</i>.”</p><p>(Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/361404">"crash point"</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Wreckage

It was a little odd when her cell phone went off. Considering that two of the three people she talked to on a regular basis were in this room. Deanna was trying not to think about the third person on that list. Opening her phone, she didn’t bother to look at the name on the caller ID.

“Deanna?”

“Cas!” She couldn’t quite keep the relief out of her voice. Worried as she was about Sam, it was still good to hear that Castiel was alive. “Where the hell are you?”

“A hospital.”

“Are you okay?”  Yeah, great question, Dee.

“No.” Cas’s penchant for laconic answers seemed to be intact, hospitalized or no.

She sighed. “Care to share a little with the class?”

“I just woke up here,” Castiel explained drily. “The doctors were fairly surprised. They thought I was brain-dead.”

Deanna can’t keep her laughter suppressed. It was either that or break down completely, and the sound of Castiel’s to-the-point description seemed funny as hell. “Well, it’s good to hear from you, man. You probably oughta zap on over here—”

He cut her off. “I can’t “zap” anywhere.”

Sam was waving at her, trying to get her attention, but Deanna put up a hand to hold him off, just for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“You could say my batteries are—drained.”

“What do you—are you saying you’re out of angel mojo?”

Cas bit off a groan of pain. “I’m saying that I am thirsty and my head aches. I have a bug bite that itches no matter how much I scratch it, and I’m saying that I’m just incredibly…”

“Human,” she finished for him. Castiel sighed into the phone, an affirmation that wasn’t even necessary at this point. Sam’s frustrated expression dropped at once as it all clicked, and he stared at her in disbelief. “Wow. Sorry.”

“Dee!” Sam hissed, in that  _you-are-not-being-very-sensitive-here_ tone she knew so well. She ignored it.

“My point is,” Castiel went on, “I can’t go anywhere without money for…an airplane ride. And food.” He sounded incredibly offended at the mere thought. “And more pain medication, ideally.”

Deanna’s mind immediately thought of the hippie version of Cas from 2014 and shuddered.  That is not going to happen , she thought angrily. No more addicts in this family, be it demon blood or pain meds or what the hell ever.

“All right,” she said. “What hospital is it?”

“It’s…West Jefferson Medical Center, Marrero, Louisiana. But, Deanna—”

“Don’t worry about it, Cas; look, we’ll come and—”

“Deanna.” And dammit, how did he manage to  do that? “You said no to Michael. I owe you an apology.”

“Cas, no, it’s fine, it’s okay—”

But Castiel was determined to keep going. “You are not the burnt and broken shell that I believed you to be.”

“Thanks,” she finally said. “I, uh…I appreciate that.” And it was true, no matter how casually she tried to brush it off.

“You’re welcome.”

As she clicked her cell phone shut, she turned to Sam. “We gotta go get Cas. He’s in a hospital in Louisiana. And I don’t know about you, but that just sounds like trouble waiting to happen.”

She didn’t miss the slight smile growing on her brother’s face as she spoke; Deanna couldn’t help but grin a little herself as she grabbed her things and headed for the Impala. At least they could do this. Rescue their friend. Make  something right.

\--

Really, the worst part of the whole thing--other than the drive taking nearly twenty hours, even if they ventured onto the interstate--had been the fact that Sam had insisted on driving.

"But Dee," he argued, flashing those big puppy dog eyes in her direction, damn him, "you're still recovering from that whole--from what happened with Cas." He looked away pointedly.

She sighed, tossing the keys to the Impala at Sam a little harder than was really necessary. The major injuries she'd gotten from their "run-in" had healed by the next week, so the fact that Sam thought she was still hurt made her a bit suspicious of his motives. Then again, she reasoned, he might have really believed it, and was just trying to be an overprotective little brother. It was kinda cute.

The drive itself was uneventful, apart from a small scuffle over musical selection. Sam did his best lawyer impression and cited her "driver picks the music" rule, and Deanna really couldn't argue with that, so she acquiesced fairly quickly. They were both still feeling unsettled by the events from a few days ago to put much effort into the argument, anyway.

For the most part, Deanna stared out the window, occasionally making conversation with Sam or fiddling with the radio. Anything to keep her mind occupied, to keep her from replaying it all over and over again--   
__

_ "I rebelled for this? So you could say yes to them?"   
_

_ "Deanna, the door--it's gone! I can't--!" _

She shook her head, scattering the echoes of their voices. No use dwelling on the past. It happened. Gotta move on, try to put it all to rights as best they could. Stop the Apocalypse, get Adam back, find Cas... After all, this was her mess and she had to be the one to clean it up. It was easier to think of the whole thing as just another mission.

"Hey." Sam's voice was quiet, barely audible above whatever “Top 40” crap was coming out of the radio. "You okay?"

"I'm--" Deanna stopped. It was the strangest thing--in spite of everything that had gone down, in spite of the fact that things were coming down hard and fast on their backs and they barely had time to breathe... “Yeah, Sammy. I’m fine.” And she was, relatively speaking, at least; she was doing better than she had been a few days ago. Anger motivated her far better than sorrow ever could.

\--

Sam had managed to get the hospital's address before they left, and as they pulled into the parking lot, Deanna remembered how damn  wiped Castiel had sounded, how drained, and how it had twisted her insides like snakes in her stomach. Every time someone left her (or maybe when she drove them off)--Sam, when he’d gone to Stanford, or after he’d killed Lilith; Cas, when Raphael had shown up and smote the living daylights out of him nearly a year ago--it came back and coiled itself deep down.

And this time, when Cas had carved the angel sigil into his chest and banishing himself, a small voice in the back of her mind had whispered that he might be dead again, and it was all Deanna's fault.  Again . But it had all been silenced once she'd answered her phone, relief quickly loosening the knots inside of her. She wouldn’t let another person she cared about disappear or die. Not after everyone she’d already lost.  
  
The plan was pretty simple; Sam would distract the nurse on duty long enough for Deanna to find the room number, and hopefully Cas. She had a nurse's badge ready-made for situations like this, although it hadn't been used often. Sam went ahead of her, doing a quick survey of the layout, then nodded to his sister to signal that everything was fine.

Deanna disappeared into the restroom, quickly changing into a set of scrubs she’d thrown in her bag. As she hung the lanyard around her neck, she exited the stall and tried to look like she belonged. Sam was by the door holding two bouquets of flowers; he passed her one of them as she walked by him, then he made his way to the front desk as Deanna herself went to find the nurses’ station.

She could hear him explaining his cover story to the nurse on duty--“It’s my sister-in-law, she’s just had a baby...yes, I thought she’d like the balloons--you don’t think it’s too much?...I’m so sorry, do you think you could show me how to get to the neo-natal ward? I’m terrible with directions, I even get turned around in an empty parking lot...”--and she was gone to look for Cas’s room number. It took some time to locate, but she found it under  Novak, Jimmy . She could only assume that Cas still had Jimmy’s wallet on hand.

The trick to fitting in somewhere you didn’t belong, Deanna had learned, was to act with confidence. That is, if you looked like you knew where you were going, what you were doing, then very few people bothered you. Confidence was not something that came easily, but it could be practiced, and Deanna had had plenty of opportunity to practice. She made her way up to the third floor without an incident, then took a right when she got down to the end of the hall and went down one, two, three doors, and--

Seeing Cas in a flimsy hospital gown was bizarre. She didn't like it. It wasn’t that Cas was weak by any means, but he just looked... _vulnerable_ like this. Not to mention the fact she'd seen him out of the trench coat exactly one time and that wasn't even  him , per se; and really, if she kept thinking about this she would give herself a headache.

"Hey, you." Her voice was soft and a little hoarse, even to her ears. Castiel blinked once and looked over.

"What--"

"Told you, Cas," she said, managing a ghost of her usual wry grin, "we weren't just gonna leave you here all on your own. You're our friend."

"You shouldn't have come after me," Cas said darkly. "You have more important things to be dealing with. Sam--"

"--is downstairs, distracting the nurse long enough so I could sneak up here and bring you this." 

She held up a duffel bag. "Won't do for you to be making a break for it in that...gown thing. Dude, it doesn’t even have a _back_.” And she wasn’t  entirely complaining, inappropriate as it might be to ogle a (former?) angel of the Lord, but then again, Deanna always had a fondness for any sort of blasphemy.  And this is probably as close to the top as she could get as far as blasphemous deeds were concerned.

Cas accepted the bag, his movements slightly stiff but not enough for Deanna to start worrying (well, more than she was). He clearly had no compunctions about changing in front of her, either, so of course Deanna made herself busy with the wheelchair in the corner of the room. After a few moments of not-looking, anyway. When she turned back around Cas was dressed in jeans, a dark t-shirt, and one of Sam’s old overshirts. It was too big for Cas’s smaller frame, but any of Deanna’s stuff would have been too small, so baggy clothes it was.

“Okay, Cas, sit.” She tapped the side of the chair.

“No.”

Deanna rolled her eyes. “We really don’t have time to argue, Cas, so just deal with it until we get outside. It’ll draw less attention. Now sit. _Please_.” Cas just glared at her before finally sitting down. Deanna pulled out her cell phone, texting a message to Sam with one hand while she grabbed the duffel with the other and hooked it on one of the handles.

_ Got Cas, meet you out front. _

\--

T he car trip couldn’t have ended soon enough. They decided to stay at a motel near Springfield, Missouri for the night, breaking the trip up across two days like they had on the way down. Even so, Deanna didn’t expect to feel well-rested in the slightest. Really, it wasn’t like she knew what getting a good night's sleep felt like anyway. Even so, tonight in particular was shaping up to be pretty awful.

She had almost managed to drift off when thoughts of the consequences of her actions hit her like a wrecking ball; it’d set off a switch in her mind, and it was terrifying, that she’d run from an Archangel, that she’d just fucked it all over and she knew, she just  knew they were going to throw her back in the Pit. Maybe it wouldn’t be Castiel this time who used that threat, and definitely not Zachariah anymore, but even so, she swore she could almost smell the caustic scent of sulfur smothering her; and oh god, she knew now what Michael’s Grace felt like, the hot burn of it nearly at her back, almost taking her over and burning away whatever pieces of Deanna Winchester were still left inside this body and--

“ _ Deanna _ .”

She inhaled sharply, eyes going wide with panic as a hand closed over the scar on her shoulder. Deanna sat up immediately, grasping for Cas’s other hand and holding on like it was a lifeline. He tried to pull back from her touch as though it shocked him, but she couldn’t make herself let go. He didn’t move away again; just let her clutch at his hand so hard it turned white. Her skin was hot, unbearably so, and for a moment it was like she was back in the Pit. Deanna barely bit back a quiet sob.

“Deanna--” he tried again.

“No, I--” she started, taking a deep, unsteady breath. “I’m sorry, I don’t--it was, it was fucking  terrifying , Cas, and I  remember \--I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, please, I just...”

It hurt so much even just to breathe, and her head was swimming, and every time she closed her eyes it was nothing but bright light and  pain . Her skin was covered in a light sheen of sweat, making her clothes cling to her uncomfortably. The wild rhythm of her heartbeat began to slow a little as she breathed.

Cas looked her in the eye for a long moment before he carefully drew her forward, wrapping his arms around her still-shaking frame. He was slightly cool, a comfortable contrast to the heat she herself seemed to be radiating at the moment. It was only then that she realized Cas wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of boxers. She wasn’t doing much better in the clothing department, either, to be fair.

It was only when she pulled back from him slightly that she noticed the scar on his chest, the remnants of the banishing sigil he’d cut into his vessel’s flesh a little over a week before. A fresh wave of guilt came over her at the memory. She traced the outline of the sigil, her fingertips brushing lightly over the faint scar tissue. It looked bright, angry red, which wasn't surprising considering the wound had only been made a few days before.

“I’m sorry.” The words sounded strangled in her throat. “I...I let you down, Cas. You, and Sam, and god, _Adam _ \--” The brother they’d never known, and never remembered until Cas’s dysfunctional angel siblings decided to drag the other Winchester kid back from the grave. Now he was stuck with an Archangel riding around in his skin, an Archangel that had been intended for _her_ , and she was to blame.

Cas leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead, so light a touch it almost hurt. Whatever tiny bit of mojo he may still have had sent a small spark from the point where his lips touched her skin. It moved through her brain--she could  feel it, and hell, that was pretty trippy--allowing her to relax.

“As I told you before,” he said, “I’m the one who should apologize to you.”

She shook her head. “Don’t start that again. Please. We’re--can we just call it even? Say we both screwed up but it’s better now and look, I’m not good at this whole talking thing so please let’s just...” Trailing off, she stared at Cas, and then did the only thing she could do.

Deanna kissed him. It was brief, light, much like the kiss he’d given her earlier, only she’d gone for his mouth this time. Cas’s lips were cool and soft and she had the vague thought that she’d like to try this again sometime soon, but right now it was fine to have nothing more than this. And then--

“Are you...are you  yawning ?”

“No.” Cas  still  wasn’t a very good liar.

“You--okay, fine.” Deanna grabbed a handful of comforter and sheets, pulling them back. “Get in.”

“What?” Cas looked kind of adorable when he was sleepy and confused. Deanna had to fight the urge to muss up his hair.

“Oh, come on,” she said, indicating the covers she held up. “Believe me, I just want to sleep right now, and you are not going back to that stupid chair; that I can already tell you will leave a crick in your neck. Now shut up and get under here.”

Cas opened his mouth like he was about to protest, but an impatient look from Deanna kept him silent as he got under the sheets.

The night was hot, surprisingly so for late spring in Missouri. Deanna got up and turned the air conditioner on not-quite full blast. Then, darting back to the bed, she pushed the comforter down and burrowed under the thin cotton sheets like Cas had already done. She still felt hot and sweaty and in serious need of a shower come morning, but Cas didn’t seem to care; he moved closer, almost tentatively, until Deanna sighed and turned over and threw her arm lightly over his chest. It was far more comfortable than Deanna was willing to admit.

Cas relaxed against her, and they shifted closer until she was almost on top of him. She wasn’t particularly inclined to do anything more--at least not right now, although maybe, possibly, if things didn’t fall apart in the next few days and Deanna had anything to say about it--and she allowed herself to settle into a deep sleep in the comfortable chill of the A/C and the slight warmth of Cas’s arms around her.

\--

(Sam, the asshole, apparently thought it was funny to take incriminating photographic evidence upon waking and seeing Deanna and Cas the next morning. And he was really,  really  good at hiding his phone. “Brat,” Deanna muttered, then rolled her eyes fondly at the look of sleepy confusion on Cas’s face. “Don’t worry about it. He’ll get what’s coming to him. I’ve already got a plan...”)


End file.
